In November 2001, Mohamedou Ould Slahi was arrested in Mauritania and taken to
Amman by Jordanian armed forces. He was interrogated and held in
solitary confinement for seven and a half months. Then a CIA rendition
team took Slahi to Bagram air base in Afghanistan. From there, two weeks
later, he was flown to Guantánamo Bay.

Around 4pm, the transport to the airport started. By then, I was a
“living dead”. My legs weren’t able to carry me any more; for the time
to come, the guards had to drag me all the way from Bagram to GTMO ...

The arrival at the airport was obvious because of the whining of the
engines, which easily went through the earplugs. The truck backed up
until it touched the plane. The guards started to shout loudly in a
language I could not differentiate. I started to hear human bodies
hitting the floor. Two guards grabbed a detainee and threw him toward
two other guards on the plane, shouting “Code”; the receiving guards
shouted back confirming receipt of the package. When my turn came, two
guards grabbed me by the hands and feet and threw me toward the
reception team. I don’t remember whether I hit the floor or was caught
by the other guards. I had started to lose feeling and it would have
made no difference anyway.

Another team inside the plane dragged me and fastened me on a small
and straight seat. The belt was so tight I could not breathe. The air
conditioning hit me, and one of the MPs was shouting, “Do not move, Do
not talk,” while locking my feet to the floor. I didn’t know how to say
“tight” in English. I was calling, “MP, MP, belt ...” Nobody came to
help me. I almost got smothered. I had a mask over my mouth and my nose,
plus the bag covering my head and my face, not to mention the tight
belt around my stomach: breathing was impossible. I kept saying, “MP,
Sir, I cannot breathe! ... MP, SIR, please.”But it seemed like my pleas
for help got lost in a vast desert.

After a couple minutes, ____________ was dropped beside me on my
right. I wasn’t sure it was him, but he told me later he felt my
presence beside him. Every once in a while, if one of the guards
adjusted my goggles, I saw a little. I saw the cockpit, which was in
front of me. I saw the green camo-uniforms of the escorting guards. I
saw the ghosts of my fellow detainees on my left and my right. “Mister,
please, my belt …hurt …” I called. When the shoutings of the guards
faded away, I knew that the detainees were all on board. “Mister, please
… belt …” A guard responded, but he not only didn’t help me, he
tightened the belt even more around my abdomen.

Now I couldn’t endure the pain; I felt I was going to die. I couldn’t
help asking for help louder. “Mister, I cannot breathe …” One of the
soldiers came and untightened the belt, not very comfortably but better
than nothing.

“It’s still tight …” I had learned the word when he asked me, “Is it tight?”

“That’s all you get.” I gave up asking for relief from the belt.

“I cannot breathe!” I said, gesturing to my nose. A guard appeared
and took the mask off my nose. I took a deep breath and felt really
relieved. But to my dismay, the guard put the mask back on my nose and
my mouth. “Sir, I cannot breathe … MP … MP.” The same guy showed up once
more, but instead of taking the mask off my nose, he took the plug out
of my ear and said, “Forget about it!” and immediately put the ear plug
back. It was harsh, but it was the only way not to smother. I was
panicking, I had just enough air, but the only way to survive was to
convince the brain to be satisfied with the tiny bit of air it got.

The plane was in the air. A guard shouted in my ear, “Ima gonna give
you some medication, you get sick.” He made me take a bunch of tablets
and gave me an apple and a peanut butter sandwich, our only meal since
the transfer procedure began. I’ve hated peanut butter since then. I had
no appetite for anything, but I pretended I was eating the sandwich so
the guards don’t hurt me. I always tried to avoid contact with those
violent guards unless it was extremely necessary. I took a bite off the
sandwich and kept the rest in my hand till the guards collected the
trash. As to the apple, the eating was tricky, since my hands were tied
to my waist and I wore mittens. I squeezed the apple between my hands
and bent my head to my waist like an acrobat to bite at it. One slip and
the apple is gone. I tried to sleep, but as tired as I was, every
attempt to take a nap ended in failure.

After five hours, the prisoners are transferred on to another flight for the final leg of their journey.

The plane seemed to be heading to the kingdom of far, far away.
Feeling lessened with every minute going by; my body numbed. I remember
asking for the bathroom once. The guards dragged me to the place, pushed
inside a small room, and pulled down my pants. I couldn’t take care of
my business because of the presence of others. But I think I managed
with a lot of effort to squeeze some water. I just wanted to arrive, no
matter where. Any place would be better than this plane.

After I don’t know how many hours, the plane landed in Cuba. The
guards started to pull us out of the plane. “Walk! ... Stop!” I couldn’t
walk, for my feet were unable to carry me. And now I noticed that at
some point I had lost one of my shoes. After a thorough search outside
the plane, the guards shouted, “Walk! Do not talk! Head down! Step!” I
only understood “Do not talk,” but the guards were dragging me anyway.
Inside the truck, the guards shouted, “Sit down!” Cross your legs!” I
didn’t understand the last part but they crossed my legs anyway. “Head
down!” one shouted, pushing my head against the rear end of another
detainee like a chicken. A female voice was shouting all the way to the
camp, “No Talking,” and a male voice, “Do not talk,” and an Arabic
translator, _________________________ _____
__________________________________________, “Keep your head down.” I was
completely annoyed by the American way of talking; I stayed that way
for a long time, until I got cured by meeting other good Americans. At
the same time, I was thinking about how they gave the same order two
different ways: “Do not talk” and “No talking.” That was interesting.

By now the chains on my ankles were cutting off the blood to my feet.
My feet became numb. I heard only the moaning and crying of other
detainees. Beating was the order of the trip. I was not spared: the
guard kept hitting me on my head and squeezing my neck against the rear
end of the other detainee. But I don’t blame him as much as I do that
poor and painful detainee, who was crying and kept moving, and so kept
raising my head. Other detainees told me that we took a ferry ride
during the trip, but I didn’t notice.

After
about an hour we were finally at the promised land. As much pain as I
suffered, I was very happy to have the trip behind me. A prophet’s
saying states: “Travel is a piece of torture.” This trip was certainly a
piece of torture. Now I was only worried about how I was going to stand
up if they asked me to. I was just paralysed. Two guards grabbed me and
shouted “Stan’ up.” I tried to jump but nothing happened; instead they
dragged me and threw me outside the truck.

In August 2003, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
authorised a plan to subject Slahi to “special interrogation”, whereby
he would be subjected to a fake rendition process and led to believe he
had been delivered to another country where he would be subjected to
more brutal treatment. On 24 August, an interrogation team burst into
his isolation cell.

“Blindfold the motherfucker if he tries to look …” One of them hit me
hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs
on my ears, and a small bag over my head. I couldn’t tell who did what.
They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I
started to bleed. All I could hear was _____ cursing, “F-this and
F-that!” I didn’t say a word, I was overwhelmingly surprised, I thought
they were going to execute me.

Thanks to the beating I wasn’t able to stand, so _____ and the other
guard dragged me out with my toes tracing the way and threw me in a
truck, which immediately took off. The beating party would go on for the
next three or four hours before they turned me over to another team
that was going to use different torture techniques.

Slahi’s manuscript, in which he describes being tortured on the boat: image via the Guardian, 16 January 2015

“Stop praying, motherfucker, you’re killing people,” _____ said, and
punched me hard on my mouth. My mouth and nose started to bleed, and my
lips grew so big that I technically could not speak anymore. The
colleague of _____ turned out to be one of my guards,
______________________________. _____ and __________ each took a side
and started to punch me and smash me against the metal of the truck. One
of the guys hit me so hard that my breath stopped and I was choking; I
felt like I was breathing through my ribs. I almost suffocated without
their knowledge ...

After 10 to 15 minutes, the truck stopped at the beach, and my
escorting team dragged me out of the truck and put me in a high-speed
boat ... Inside the boat, _____ made me drink salt water, I believe it
was directly from the ocean. It was so nasty I threw up. They would put
any object in my mouth and shout, “Swallow, motherfucker!”, but I
decided inside not to swallow the organ-damaging salt water, which
choked me when they kept pouring it in my mouth. “Swallow, you idiot!” I
contemplated quickly, and decided for the nasty, damaging water rather
than death.

_____ and ____________ escorted me for about three hours in the
high-speed boat. The goal of such a trip was, first, to torture the
detainee and claim that “the detainee hurt himself during transport,”
and second, to make the detainee believe he was being transferred to
some far, faraway secret prison. We detainees knew all of that; we had
detainees reporting they had been flown around for four hours and found
themselves in the same jail where they started. I knew from the
beginning that I was going to be transferred to __________________,
about a five-minute ride. __________________ had a very bad reputation:
just hearing the name gave me nausea. I knew the whole long trip I was
going to take was meant to terrorise me. But what difference does it
make? I cared less about the place, and more about the people who were
detaining me...

When
the boat reached the coast, _____ and his colleague dragged me out and
made me sit, crossing my legs. I was moaning from the unbearable pain.

“Uh … Uh … ALLAH … ALLAH … I told you not to fuck with us, didn’t I?”
said Mr X, mimicking me. I hoped I could stop moaning, because the
gentleman kept mimicking me and blaspheming the Lord. However, the
moaning was necessary so I could breathe. My feet were numb, for the
chains stopped the blood circulation to my hands and my feet; I was
happy for every kick I got so I could alter my position. “Do not move
motherfucker!” said _____, but sometimes I couldn’t help changing
position; it was worth the kick.

“We appreciate everybody who works with us, thanks gentlemen,” said
_________________. I recognised his voice; although he was addressing
his Arab guests, the message was addressed to me more than anybody. It
was nighttime. My blindfold didn’t keep me from feeling the bright
lighting from some kind of high-watt projectors...

After about 40 minutes, I couldn’t really tell, ______________
instructed the Arabic team to take over. The two guys grabbed me
roughly, and since I couldn’t walk on my own, they dragged me on the
tips of my toes to the boat. I must have been very near the water,
because the trip to the boat was short. I don’t know. They either they
put me in another boat or in a different seat. This seat was both hard
and straight.

“Move!”

“I can’t move!”

“Move, fucker!” They gave this order knowing that I was too hurt to
be able to move. After all I was bleeding from my mouth, my ankles, my
wrists, and maybe my nose, I couldn’t tell for sure. But the team wanted
to keep the factor of fear and terror maintained.

“Sit!” said the Egyptian guy, who did most of the talking while both
were pulling me down until I hit the metal. The Egyptian sat on my right
side, and the Jordanian on my left.

“What’s your fucking name?” asked the Egyptian.

“M-O-O-H-H-M-M-EE-D-D-O-O-O-U!” I answered. Technically I couldn’t
speak because of the swollen lips and hurting mouth. You could tell I
was completely scared. Usually I wouldn’t talk if somebody starts to
hurt me. In Jordan, when the interrogator smashed me in the face, I
refused to talk, ignoring all his threats. This was a milestone in my
interrogation history. You can tell I was hurt like never before; it
wasn’t me anymore, and I would never be the same as before. A thick line
was drawn between my past and my future with the first hit _____
delivered to me.

“He is like a kid!” said the Egyptian accurately, addressing his
Jordanian colleague. I felt warm between them both, though not for long.
With the co-operation of the Americans, a long torture trip was being
prepared.

I couldn’t sit straight in the chair. They put me in a kind of thick
jacket which fastened me to the seat. It was good feeling. However,
there was a destroying drawback to it: my chest was so tightened that I
couldn’t breathe properly. Plus, the air circulation was worse than the
first trip. I didn’t know why, exactly, but something was definitely
going wrong.

“I c … a … c … n’t br … e … a … the!”

“Suck the air!” said the Egyptian wryly. I was literally suffocating
inside the bag around my head. All my pleas and my begging for some free
air ended in a cul-de-sac.

I heard indistinct conversations in English, I think it was _____ and
his colleague, and probably _________________. Whoever it was, they
were supplying the Arab team with torture materials during the three- or
four-hour trip. The order went as follows: They stuffed the air between
my clothes and me with ice cubes from my neck to my ankles, and
whenever the ice melted, they put in new, hard ice cubes. Moreover,
every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in
the face. The ice served both for the pain and for wiping out the
bruises I had from that afternoon. Everything seemed to be perfectly
prepared. People from cold regions might not understand the extent of
the pain when ice cubes get stuck on your body. Historically, kings
during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the
victim slowly die. The other method, of hitting the victim while
blindfolded in inconsistent intervals, was used by the Nazis during the
second world war. There is nothing more terrorising than making somebody
expect a smash every single heartbeat.

We live in the void of metamorphoses...
But…
Are we near to our conscience, or far from it? #CIATorture #HumanRights: image via James Luchte, 25 December 2014

In autumn 2003, soon after his false rendition,
Slahi was moved to a blacked-out isolation cell built specifically for
his interrogation. A delegation from the International Committee of the
Red Cross that visited in September was not allowed to meet with him.
Eventually, his interrogators presented him with a proposition.

“_________________ wants to see you in a couple of days,” _________
said. I was so terrified; at this point I was just fine without his
visit.

“He is welcome,” I said. I started to go to the toilet relentlessly.
My blood pressure went crazily high. I was wondering what the visit
would be like. But thank God the visit was much easier than what I
thought. _____________ came, escorted by _________. He was, as always,
practical and brief.

“I am very happy with your cooperation. Remember when I told you that
I preferred civilised conversations? I think you have provided 85% of
what you know, but I am sure you’re gonna provide the rest,” he said,
opening an ice bag with some juice.

“Oh, yeah, I’m also happy!” I said, forcing myself to drink the juice
just to act as if I were normal. But I wasn’t: I was like, 85% is a big
step coming out of his mouth. _____________ advised me to keep
cooperating.

“I brought you this present,” he said, handing me a pillow. Yes, a
pillow. I received the present with a fake overwhelming happiness, and
not because I was dying to get a pillow. No, I took the pillow as a sign
of the end of the physical torture.

We have a joke back home about a man who stood bare naked on the
street. When someone asked him, “How can I help you?” He replied, “Give
me shoes.” And that was exactly what happened to me. All I needed was a
pillow! But it was something: alone in my cell, I kept reading the tag
over and over.

“Remember when _____________ told you about the 15% you’re holding
back,” said _________ a couple of days after _______________ visit. “I
believe that your story about Canada doesn’t make sense. You know what
we have against you, and you know what the FBI has against you,” he
continued.

“So what would make sense?” I asked.

“You know exactly what makes sense,” he said sardonically.

“You’re right, I was wrong about Canada. What I did exactly was …”

“I want you to write down what you’ve just said. It made perfect sense and I understood, but I want it on paper.”

“My pleasure, Sir!” I said.

---

I came to Canada with a plan to blow up the CN Tower in Toronto.
My accomplices were
________________________________________________________ and
___________. ___________ went to Russia to get us the supply of
explosives. _____________ wrote an explosives simulation software that I
picked up, tested myself, and handed in a data medium to
______________. The latter was supposed to send it with the whole plan
to _____________ in London so we could get the final fatwa from the
Sheikh. _________ was supposed to buy a lot of sugar to mix with the
explosives in order to increase the damage. ______________ provided the
financing. Thanks to Canadian intel, the plan was discovered and
sentenced to failure. I admit that I am as guilty as any other
participants and am so sorry and ashamed for what I have done. Signed,
M.O. Slahi

When I handed the paper to __________________, he read it happily.

“This statement makes perfect sense.”

“If you’re ready to buy, I am selling,” I said. ______________ could
hardly hold himself on the chair; he wanted to leave immediately. I
guess the prey was big, and _____________ was overwhelmed because he
reached a breakthrough where no other interrogators had, in spite of
almost four years of uninterrupted interrogation from all kinds of
agencies from more than six countries. What a success! ______________
almost had a heart attack from happiness.

“I’ll go see him!”

I think the only unhappy person in the team was _______, because ____ doubted the truthfulness of the story.

"It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender", Jenny Holzer, 1983-85: image via Ian Alan Paul @IanAlanPaul, 22 December 2014

Indeed
the next day _________________ came to see me, escorted as always by
his ______________. “Remember when I told about the 15% you were holding
back?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I think this confession covered that 15%!” I was like, Hell, yes!

“I am happy that it did,” I said.

“Who provided the money?”

“_________ did."

“And you, too?” _____________ asked.

“No, I took care of the electrical part.” I don’t really know why I
denied the financial part. Did it really make a difference? Maybe I just
wanted to maintain the consistency.

“What if we tell you that we found your signature on a fake credit
card?” said ______________. I knew he was bullshitting me because I knew
I never dealt with such dubious things. But I was not going to argue
with him.

“Just tell me the right answer. Is it good to say yes or to say no?” I
asked. At that point I hoped I was involved in something so I could
admit to it and relieve myself of writing about every practicing Muslim I
ever met, and every Islamic organisation I ever heard of. It would have
been much easier to admit to a true crime and say that’s that.

“This
confession is consistent with the intels we and other agencies possess,”
_____________ said.

“I am happy.”

“Is the story true?” asked __________.

“Look, these people I was involved with are bad people anyway, and
should be put under lock and key. And as to myself, I don’t care as long
as you are pleased. So if you want to buy, I am selling.”

“But we have to check with the other agencies, and if the story is incorrect, they’re gonna find out,” _______________

“If you want the truth, this story didn’t happen,” I said sadly.
__________ had brought some drinks and candies that I forced myself to
swallow. They tasted like dirt because I was so nervous. __________ took
his ______ outside and pitted him on me. ____________ came back
harassing me and threatening me with all kinds of suffering and agony.
__________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________.

“You know how it feels when you experience our wrath,” ____________
said. I was like, what the heck does this asshole want from me? If he
wants a confession, I already provided one. Does he want me to resurrect
the dead? Does he want me to heal his blindness? I am not a prophet,
nor does he believe in them. “The Bible is just the history of the
Jewish people, nothing more,” he used to say. If he wants the truth, I
told him I have done nothing! I couldn’t see a way out. “Yes … Yes! …
Yes!” After ____________ made me sweat to the last drop in my body,
_________________ called him and gave him advice about the next tactics.
___________ left and _____________ continued.

“_________________ has overall control. If he is happy everybody is.
And if he isn’t, nobody is.” ______________ started to ask me other
questions about other things, and I used every opportunity to make
myself look as bad as I could. “I’m going to leave you alone with papers
and pen, and I want you to write everything you remember about your
plan in Canada!”

“Yes, Sir.”

Two days later, they were back at my door.

Redactions marked in the text were made by the US government when Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary was cleared for public release

Where
is justice for the men still abandoned in Guántanamo Bay? A man who is
no more a terrorist than Forrest Gump was remains incarcerated four
years after he was cleared for release: Morris Davis, The Guardian, 16
January 2015“I will be back soon,” I said, as we stood up and shook hands. Then I
turned and walked a few steps to the gate, and waited for the guard to
unlock it so I could leave. Those were the last words I said to Mohamedou Ould Slahi
after I met him in the tiny compound he shared with Tariq al-Sawah in
the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. That was seven and a half years
ago. I have never been inside the camp again. Slahi has never been out.I didn’t know, that afternoon in the summer of 2007, that in a few
weeks I would send an email to the US deputy secretary of defence,
Gordon England, saying I could no longer in good conscience serve as
chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo military commissions. I reached that
decision after receiving a written order placing Brigadier-General Tom
Hartmann over me and the Pentagon general counsel, Jim Haynes, over
Hartmann.Hartmann had chastised me for refusing to use evidence obtained by
“enhanced” interrogation techniques, saying: “President Bush said we
don’t torture, so who are you to say we do?” Haynes authored the
“torture memo” that the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld,
signed in April 2003 approving interrogation techniques that were not
authorised by military regulations –- the memo where Rumsfeld scribbled
in the margin: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [for
detainees during interrogations] limited to 4 hours?” Rather than face a
Hobson’s choice when they directed me to go into court with
torture-derived evidence, I chose to quit before they had the chance.Slahi and al-Sawah had been recommended to me as potential
cooperating witnesses. Before I met them, I asked one of my prosecutors
to review their files and check with other agencies to be sure nothing
had been overlooked. We attended a meeting where those who had spent
years investigating Slahi briefed their findings. The end result was
a consensus that, like Forrest Gump, Slahi popped up around significant
events by coincidence, not design.

Several
times I met Slahi and al-Sawah to try to secure their cooperation. They
had a garden inside their compound where they grew herbs and
vegetables. I don’t like hot tea even in the dead of winter, but
whenever I visited, Slahi insisted on brewing tea using mint fresh from
the garden. I recall sitting outside his hut in the Guantánamo heat,
soaked in sweat, drinking hot tea and spitting mint leaf remnants on the
ground as we talked.I thought Slahi would be transferred out when President Obama took
office. It seemed likely in 2010 when US district court judge James
Robertson ordered him released after finding that incriminating
statements he made were obtained by coercion, and that other evidence
only proved there was smoke but no fire.But instead of transferring Slahi, the Obama administration appealed
and the US court of appeals proved to be an impenetrable barrier, just
as it has in every case where a detainee won a habeas challenge at the
district court level.It has been four and a half years since Slahi’s release was ordered
and he is still within sight of where he and I shook hands for the last
time in 2007.We
were told that all the men at Guantánamo were the “worst of the
worst”. In my job as chief prosecutor, where my focus was on reviewing
cases for potential criminal prosecution, it was obvious the label was
mostly hype. While the label fits a few -– like Jhald Sheikh Mohammed –-
fewer than 4% of the 779 men ever sent there have or will face charges.Six military commissions have been completed since they were first
authorised by George Bush in November 2001. Five of the six men
convicted and sentenced as war criminals –- Hicks, Hamdan, Khadr, al-Qosi
and Noor Uthman Mohammed -– are now back in their home countries.
(Hamdan and Mohammed have since been cleared.) What does it say about
American justice when a person fares better being a convicted war
criminal than someone we could not even charge?Men were sent to Guantánamo because some in the Bush administration
thought it was outside the reach of the law and we could exploit people
there with impunity. Time proved them wrong. We have spent more than
$5bn on detention operations at Guantánamo since it opened 13 years ago.
There are 122 men there now at a cost of about $3m a year each. Almost
half are approved for transfer, a status in which many have languished
for years as the US tries to beg and bribe other countries to take them.
And now some members of Congress want to make it more difficult for
Obama to close it before he leaves office in January 2017.I hope many will read Slahi’s book, and come to appreciate that Guantánamo is not
just an abstract concept. It is a real place where real people have
spent years wondering if anyone will ever come back for them.America has paid a heavy price for a bad decision made 13 years ago,
but it pales in comparison to the toll on those who remain trapped in
the black hole of Guantánamo.

2 comments:

Thanks for pushing this further along, Tom. In view of the trust between allies, and the "Special Relationship" I particularly liked the end of a Guardian piece:"British ministers have raised his case at least 15 times in the last five years, according to statements to parliament. In the past, US diplomats have said privately that they are not convinced the British government is serious when it says it wished to see Aamer returned to the UK, where he could be reunited with his British wife and four children.

The programmed motions of David Cameron indicate that even were he to be generously attributed with the possession of a heart, signs of its existence, or of proof of the return of Shaker Aamer to British soil, would be perhaps among the last things future archeologists of this fossil history, digging up the remains beneath Downing Street, might expect to discover.

As for Mohamedou Ould Slahi, against whom not a single shred of credible evidence has ever been unearthed, it remains likely he will languish in the "democratic" Limbo of Gitmo indefinitely, if only because in the "minds" of the dominant Republican majority in this country, the place is an important national symbol of pride and power, somewhat along the lines of Disneyland, and if such a significant cultural landmark is to be maintained and preserved, actual living and breathing inmates -- whether or not charged with any offense -- are always going to be essential to the overall effect: Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Aamer Shaker, Mickey Mouse, all jewels in the one great, ugly, tarnished, tilted crown of "freedom".